


Home Safe

by Jain



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: dream_holiday, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Third Person, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:46:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur takes Eames to one of his safehouses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [cephilapod](http://cephilapod.livejournal.com).

"Goddamned buggering _fuck_ ," Eames muttered as Arthur unlocked the front door and held it open, letting Eames precede him into the lobby. "Bloody fucking shitting fuck."

Arthur didn't bother hushing him. Eames's voice was low enough not to attract attention, and even if someone were to overhear him, they'd probably attribute his bad temper to the rain soaking his hair and the jacket he was huddled into, arms wrapped tightly about himself as though to conserve warmth. Besides, Eames was entitled to a little annoyance.

Arthur hit the elevator call button--he'd ordinarily take the stairs to the third floor apartment, but that wasn't an option at the moment--and kept a surreptitious eye on Eames. He'd left off cursing a blue streak when the lobby door closed behind them; now his lips pinched together tightly, his face looking pale and haggard.

The elevator pinged as its doors slid open. It was empty, and Eames took advantage of that fact to lean against the wall. Arthur suppressed the somewhat absurd urge to murmur reassurances about _Two floors to go_ and _Just one now, we're almost there_. He _did_ say, "This is us," when the elevator doors opened and Eames didn't move.

"Yes, thank you, Arthur," Eames said, a thread of completely unnecessary sarcasm in his voice, and somehow managed to give the impression of shouldering past Arthur despite never actually touching him.

Arthur rolled his eyes, then smoothed his expression into placidity before Eames could catch sight of it. "306," he said and followed Eames's careful steps down the hallway. He drew his gun and unlocked the door one-handed; a chin raise in Eames's direction had Eames moving to one side, out of the line of fire. Not that Arthur was expecting trouble--his safehouses were virtually impossible to trace back to him, and he was 99 percent certain that they hadn't been followed--but it was nonetheless better to be prepared.

He eased the door open and saw his alarm system flashing a green light at him. A little of the tension in his stomach eased at the sight, and he quickly typed in his passcode. Still, he cleared all four rooms of the apartment before returning to the front door to wave Eames in.

"Bathroom's right there," he said, pointing, then turned his attention to the column of locks on his door, engaging each one in turn. "Go ahead and get the hot water running in the sink, but don't try to take off your jacket and shirt yet."

There was almost no need for that caution; Arthur made it into the bathroom only fifteen or so seconds behind Eames, who was moving slower and more carefully than usual.

Eames sat down on the closed toilet lid and looked at Arthur expectantly.

"Hang on," Arthur said and unbuttoned Eames's jacket, eased it off his shoulders and down his arms and tossed it into the corner. The lavender dress shirt underneath was soaked through with blood on the left side. "Do you have any communicable diseases that I should be aware of?" he asked, starting on the buttons at Eames's cuffs. He planned to be cautious either way, of course, but Arthur wasn't ever going to _not_ pursue a relevant line of inquiry.

Eames made an aborted movement that might have started out as a shoulder shrug before it became too painful to complete. "Not so far as I know."

Arthur opened his first aid kit and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Undoing the rest of the buttons on Eames's shirt with them on was a challenge, but Arthur managed. He slid the shirt off of Eames and dropped it on top of the jacket.

As he'd suspected, the gash across Eames's ribs was nasty enough to need stitches: maybe three inches long and revealing thin layers of yellow fat and a deeper layer of mostly intact muscle. It was only their assailant's inexperience that meant Eames was still alive. If he'd aimed just a couple inches lower, Eames would have bled out from the resulting gut wound rather than suffer the relatively minor pain of having a knife bounce off one of his floating ribs.

"Are you okay with the floor in here, or are you going to make me sacrifice a set of 400 thread count sheets?" Arthur asked, stripping off his gloves and throwing them away.

"You'd really do that for me?" Eames asked, already sliding down to the floor.

"Sure," Arthur said. "Though I'd make you replace anything you bled on."

"Ah, of course. Always a catch."

Before Eames could lie down on the hard tile, Arthur opened the cabinet under the sink and took out three folded bathtowels that would function as a makeshift pillow. He dropped them on the floor behind Eames. "Get comfy."

"Yes, thank you," Eames said. If he meant the response to be sarcastic this time, he didn't quite manage it. Eames just sounded tired and shocky and a little bit lost.

Arthur pressed his lips together. He was in control of this situation. He was about to make Eames feel even worse than he did at the moment, but afterwards Eames would be fine. He slid open a drawer and took out a washcloth, which he folded in half and handed to Eames. "Bite down on this."

Eames made a face, but put the washcloth between his teeth obligingly enough.

The sluggish water heater in the apartment building had finally done its duty, and faint steam began to rise from the sink. Arthur grabbed his robe off the hook on the door and slid it on backwards, then tied the belt. He scrubbed his hands and arms to the elbows for a full thirty seconds, using plenty of soap, and dried them on a fresh towel.

Then he pulled on another pair of latex gloves to clean the cut, ignoring Eames's hiss of pain. He opened the packet containing an atraumatic suture that was near the top of his first aid kit, and he was ready to go.

"Try not to move," he said. Eames stilled instantly, and Arthur started stitching him up.

Four careful stitches in, Eames said, after a quick gasp, "You know, darling, you're surprisingly unbrutal at this."

"I'm still wielding the poky needle," Arthur said wryly. "Are you sure this is the best time to sling insults about? And 'unbrutal' isn't a word."

"I like helping the evolution of language along," Eames said. His face was very white and his breaths shallow; Arthur couldn't tell if the breathing thing was due to pain or to Arthur's exhortation that Eames not move, and he didn't really want to know.

"Almost done," he murmured.

"I didn't like to ask," Eames said. "But that's--" another gasp as Arthur slid the needle through his skin once more--"that's very good to hear."

"And we're done," Arthur said, tying off the thread one last time and cutting it. "Hold still for the iodine and then you can have some T3 if you want."

"I'd rather have it before, if you don't mind," Eames said. "Preferably twenty minutes ago."

Arthur rolled his eyes even as he splashed iodine liberally on Eames's ribs. "I needed you to be able to give a yell if anything went wrong while I was giving you the stitches."

"And you mean 'give a yell' literally, I take it. How often have you done this before?" Eames asked suspiciously. He craned his head to try to examine Arthur's handiwork, only to let his head drop back with a grunt of pain when the action aggravated his injury.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Arthur slapped a bandage on Eames's ribs and taped it into place, then stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. "You can look at it when it's healed a bit more."

"Don't think I haven't noticed you avoiding my question," Eames said.

Arthur handed him a pill, slid an arm underneath Eames's back to help him to a sitting position, and got him a glass of water from the bathroom tap.

"I had to sew myself up once when a bullet grazed my thigh," Arthur said.

He could see several responses flit through Eames's mind--an anomaly, since as far as he could see Eames usually didn't bother thinking before he spoke--until he finally settled on, "I don't remember that scar. Show me."

This last was said with a lascivious leer. Arthur shook his head.

"Not a good idea," he said quellingly, even as the less noble part of his mind said, _Well...._ Eames wasn't exactly in terrible shape, despite the stitches, and it had been a while since they'd last hooked up: the 2009 job they'd worked in Venezuela, if Arthur was remembering correctly. He couldn't deny that he was tempted.

"Come on," Eames said. "If you're going to play doctor with me, it should at least be the _fun_ kind of playing doctor."

"That's an awful line," Arthur said, stalling for time.

"My apologies. Can we move this to the bedroom now?"

"Fine," Arthur said, more sharply than he'd intended. From the half-smile on Eames's face, he knew it, too. Either that or he was just being a smug asshole at getting his own way.

Arthur helped Eames to his feet. "I'll be in as soon as I've finished cleaning up in here."

"Of course," Eames said. He brushed a kiss across Arthur's mouth right before he left, soft and dry and frustratingly gentle.

The bathroom wasn't exactly a wreck, despite its being a site of a minor surgery, but there was enough blood smeared around to make it a health hazard. Arthur snapped on another pair of gloves and got to work.

Eames's lavender shirt went straight in the trash, too blood-soaked to be salvageable...or at the very least too ugly for Arthur to justify trying to salvage it. The jacket was in better shape and was midnight blue besides, good for hiding stains; it went into a plastic bag and got tossed into the front hall for Eames to collect later. Lysol wipes took care of the mess on the floor and toilet seat and wall.

Arthur could've gone straight to the bedroom at that point, but he hated leaving a job half done, and in any case it only took another few minutes to repack his first aid kit and to toss the used towels into the laundry hamper.

When he finally reached his bedroom, Eames was lying on the bed with an eminently untrustworthy smile on his face.

"What is it?" Arthur asked, even as he started toeing off his shoes. If he only fucked people he could trust, he'd never get laid.

"What is what?" Eames said innocently.

"That grin."

"Oh." Eames blinked at him in apparent surprise. "Just happy, I suppose."

Arthur snorted. "Just stoned, you mean." He sighed inwardly. He'd hoped that Eames wouldn't be hit too hard by the codeine, but apparently that was too much to wish for. "Okay, raincheck on the sex. Can you keep your hands to yourself if I sleep here, or are you going to make me crash on the couch?"

Eames's lip turned downwards in an honest-to-God pout. "Arthur! Not really."

"Yes, really. So, which is it going to be: bed or couch?"

"You could take a pill, too, and then we'd be equally impaired and wouldn't have to wait to fuck," Eames said, his mind obviously unwilling to jump tracks.

"Considering that we just got attacked a couple of hours ago by men whom we decided to outrun rather than neutralize, I think that that's a very stupid idea. You're pretty out of your head right now, though, so I won't hold it against you."

"Thank you," Eames said, with all appearance of sincerity.

"You're welcome," Arthur said briefly. "Now could you please answer my goddamned question?"

Eames tilted his head to the side. "What question?"

"Am I sleeping on the--"

"Oh, bed," Eames interrupted. "Obviously. Get your shapely arse in here."

Arthur grimaced, but didn't comment further. Either Eames would keep to Arthur's terms, or he wouldn't, and Arthur was more than capable of abandoning his bed if Eames got too handsy.

He stripped down to his boxers and undershirt and slid under the covers. Eames--naked, of course, Arthur noted with some resignation--shifted closer to him. "Eames," he said warningly.

"Platonic cuddles only, darling, I promise," Eames said with an unexpectedly sweet smile that Arthur found himself returning despite himself. "Kiss me goodnight?"

Arthur chuckled and leaned over to press a quick kiss to Eames's mouth. "Goodnight, Mr. Eames."

* * *

Arthur blinked his eyes open. Before he could slip out of bed and check his apartment for the source of the disturbance that had awakened him, Eames said, "It's me."

Arthur relaxed minimally. "Eames. Do you need anything?"

"Just to collect a raincheck."

"Hang on," Arthur said quickly. He sat up and reached for the bedside table lamp. "Close your eyes," he said and then followed his own advice as he flicked the switch.

As soon as he was able to reopen his eyes, he looked at Eames assessingly. "How happy are you right now?"

"Happier if I had your cock in me right now," Eames said in a reassuringly dry tone. Not to mention that Arthur could see the faint lines of tension around his mouth, undoubtedly a sign that the T3 was wearing off. He'd get Eames another pill soon, but for now Arthur was willing to try a different sort of pain relief.

Still, that didn't mean there was nothing objectionable in Eames's request. "So that I can sew you up again after you inevitably pop your stitches?" Arthur said. "I don't think so, Eames." Eames opened his mouth, no doubt to protest, and Arthur cut him off. "Just relax, okay? I've got you."

He tugged the blanket aside and slid a hand over Eames's burgeoning erection.

Eames sucked in a sharp breath, a new and altogether better sort of tension growing on his face. "Don't be alarmed if it takes a little extra effort," he said, as if Arthur couldn't figure out for himself that a man in Eames's condition might be a bit distracted by the pain from his eight fucking stitches. "It's not a reflection on you, I promise."

In lieu of a verbal reply, Arthur laid an arm across Eames's lower belly to hold him still and slid his cock into his mouth. Eames tasted almost bland--just clean skin with a hint of salt--but, on the upside, he felt great, his foreskin interestingly loose and pliable on his half-hard cock. Arthur rubbed his tongue against it and felt Eames shiver in response.

Arthur swallowed his smile, which wouldn't exactly be conducive to cocksucking, and rested his head on Eames's stomach, settling in for a long, easy session. A moment later, one of Eames's hands came down to clasp the back of Arthur's neck, his thumb brushing slowly against Arthur's skin, and Arthur had to hold back another smile.

Usually Eames was noisy in bed, but either his pain was holding him back or he'd caught the same sense of almost...peacefulness that Arthur was feeling, as though each wet slide of his tongue and mouth on Eames's cock were like drifting mindlessly in a relaxing bath.

Which wasn't to say that it wasn't hot, too; Arthur's dick had taken an interest in the proceedings thirty seconds in, and a minute after that he'd slipped his hand down to jack himself while blowing Eames. But it was different than their usual, in a way that felt surprisingly intimate and that kept feeling different even after Eames tugged on Arthur's hair in warning and Arthur let him slip out of his mouth, pulling his hand away from his own cock to stroke Eames through his orgasm.

He pressed a kiss to Eames's hip and watched him come down, flushed and breathless and beautiful. "My turn now?" Eames asked languidly after a minute or two.

Arthur kissed his hip again. "I've got it," he said, hand back on his cock; he could feel his own orgasm just in reach, and then it shuddered through him as Eames's hand tightened once more in his hair and then instantly gentled, petting him carefully.

"You know, you just came on my knee," Eames said, his voice thoughtful. Arthur grinned and got up to get a wet washcloth and another pill for Eames.

"Cheers," Eames said when he handed the T3 over with a glass of water, Arthur taking care of the clean-up, as per usual.

"We should do this again sometime," Eames said later, when they were both clean and tucked back under the covers and considerably better-kissed than they had been a few minutes prior.

Arthur frowned into the darkness. "Are you high again?"

"I didn't mean the part where I got stabbed and you had to give me stitches," Eames said reassuringly. "I meant the other bits. The nice bits."

"And answering my actual question..."

"Well, maybe a little," Eames admitted. "But ask me again when I'm sober, and I'll tell you the same thing."

"Yeah, okay, I'll do that," Arthur said flippantly. His realization, as he said the words, that he actually meant them came as something of a surprise. Luckily, Arthur was a pro at assimilating new information. He took just a moment to shrug mentally, then put an arm around Eames--who apparently became half-cat under the influence of opiates and was cuddling up against him once more--and stroked him gently and mindlessly until he fell asleep.


End file.
